This past week, I enjoyed recovering from the Half Marathon I ran last Sunday.  I was just a little sore for a few days and I look forward to starting back to early morning runs again this week to stay in shape as much as possible.  


Last week was busy as always and we did a fun "R" craft as my 4 year old continues with her Preschool Alphabet Boxes.  I got this "R" craft idea HERE.


Below are pictures of the colorful craft:

This weekend I will be heading up north with my parents to see my dad get inducted into his high school's hall of fame for basketball!  I'm so excited for him!  I am looking forward to the trip and I am blessed to have such a wonderful husband who will be with our children while I get some time away to see my dad receive recognition for his great career on the basketball court.  I hope to blog about my trip when I get home from the weekend.


Speaking of basketball, I wanted to share some ideas I came up with to motivate my children in their lessons that is centered around a basketball theme.  My 6 year old uses Math-U-See (MUS), Alpha and she always says she wants to play a fun game because she sees my son play lots of games with his RightStart math program.  So I made up the following game while she was filling in her MUS worksheet.
I took the math problems on this sheet and wrote each problem on a sheet of orange paper and then I wrote the answers on separate pieces of paper like this:



My daughter picked one problem from the pile, answered it using her MUS blocks if she needed them then wrote the answer on her worksheet.  She then found the answer from the pile of numbers.
She balled up the piece of paper that had her answer on it to turn it into a "basketball".  Then we taped the problem to the edge of the wastepaper basket, she said the problem and answer out loud, and then she tried to shoot the basketball in the goal!
Here she is tossing the ball ( paper) into the goal (wastepaper basket, which is located to the far left of photo):
Oh my goodness, I didn't realize how messy the room was until I uploaded this picture!  Oh well, I'm keeping this post real since you can now see a glimpse of how our classroom looks for the majority of the time while I'm teaching!
It did take much longer to fill out her math worksheet while playing this game of "basketball", but she loved it and it was much more fun to do it this way vs. sitting at her seat the whole time.

The idea of this game came to me a few months ago when my son was doing a lesson from Shurley English Homeschooling Grammer and Composition book. (Level 2, Teacher's Manual, page 56).  I don't have pictures of him doing this game so I hope I can explain it clearly.....

There was an activity that was teaching the different types of sentences (Declarative, Interrogative, and Exclamatory) and instead of their suggestion, I did a slight variation of the lesson by having my son play "basketball" with the different types of sentences.  I wrote down different sentences, one sentence per slip of paper.  He picked a sentence from the pile and  had to decide which type of sentence it was.  After deciding the sentence type, he then taped either the word Declarative, Interrogative or Exclamatory onto the edge of the wastepaper basket depending on his answer.  He balled up the sentence and tossed it into the wastepaper basket that had the correct sentence label on it.  My son got really into his "basketball" game and was trying to dunk his "sentence" ball and make all sorts of moves while scoring 2 points for his grammar game :)

These games were simple to set up and great to get them up and moving while learning!  I just wish I had the time and energy to make learning math and grammar fun like this everyday for all my cupcakes!  :)  

I'm linking this post up to Lynda's "A Day in Our Life" Blog Hop

Click button below to join Lynda, Anna-Marie and I for the No Ordinary Blog Hop for the entire month of January:) The blogger who posts the most will be spotlighted next month and be given a Star Blogger Award. Come join the FUN!!